New York - Mainstream musicals were once inspired by Sholom Aleichem, Thornton Wilder and George Bernard Shaw.Advertisement

In an era when we've become far more adept at recognizing brands than genius, Broadway is devoting a lot more resources to piggybacking on proven pop success - the oeuvre, say, of Abba and Oprah.

Not in every case, of course. But where to look for adaptable material appears to favor, ever more intensively, buying power over narrative power. It can be easier to base the sale of a $110 ticket on a title that's already been stamped on a DVD.

There have always been musicals that were derivative; if you look back at the golden age of the late 60s/early 70s, some of our greatest musicals -- Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Man of La Mancha, et. el. -- were based on other works.

...But it seems to me that the train of thought used to be something like, "Let's base a musical on Don Quijote, and if we bring fresh insight to it and do it well we'll create good art and make money," whereas these days the process seems to be something like, "Let's base a musical on a Puccini opera (or on the music of an over-the-hill pop star) and we'll make a lot of money."

The parts about fresh insight, doing it well, and making good art are omitted.

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